Would you be willing to give a retailer your email address in return for access to free in-store WiFi?

Mobile penetration

Over 712m smartphones were shipped globally in 2012 according to IDC – a 45% increase on 2011.

Lower-cost smartphones made by Huawei and ZTC are helping to fuel this trend in emerging markets.

Nielsen reports a 97% mobile phone penetration in the UK, with 64% of these being ‘smartphones’.

In 2012, smartphone penetration in the UK crested 50%. At the end of 2012, penetration levels were close to two-thirds of the population.

Smartphone use is, of course, a global phenomenon. Smartphone penetration in the EU5 has also crossed into the mainstream at 57%, which is higher than the respective penetration rate of the United States (54%). Meanwhile, rates are lower in Germany (51%) and Italy (53%).

Daddy or chips? Alcohol or dog and bone?

A recent survey by the insurer Endsleigh reports that 32% of us would be more willing to go without alcohol for a month than lose our mobile phone, with 24% of respondents believing that losing their phone would be detrimental to their mental health.

Tablet sales

More detail from the Velti Whitebook...The IDC reported a near 14% drop in PC and laptop sales in the first quarter of 2013. By 2017, it’s expected that annual tablet shipments will exceed 350 million, significantly in excess of the 300 million PCs currently shipped annually.

Close to 53 million tablets were sold worldwide in Q4 2012, a 75% increase YoY.

From Q4 2011 to the same period in 2012, Samsung and Asus had the biggest growth but Apple is still in the lead.

Tablets sold globally in Q4 2012:

22.9 million iPads

7.9 million Samsung devices

3.1 million Asus devices

Here's the visualisation of international tablet penetration:

Simultaneous screen use has obviously increased as a result. Second screening breaks down as follows - these figures are for secondary activities when watching television.

Travel companies could only answer 30% of customer questions emailed to them, compared to 50% in 2012

In contrast, their websites successfully provided responses to 63% of online enquiries (up from 54% in 2012)

One travel company answered an email accurately in 19 minutes, it took another company 5 days to respond

Scheduled airline websites were able to successfully answer 66% of customer questions, performing slightly better that package operators (60%). In 2012 the difference was larger, at 20%

80% of the travel businesses in the study provided links to Twitter and Facebook and 40% offered their own forums. However none of them linked customer service to social media

Social media drives ROI for FMCG brands

I love a double acronym sub-heading on a Friday.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, four out of five consumers said they would be inclined to more often purchase a brand after being exposed to its social media presence.

83% of consumers exposed to social media would trial a brand’s product.

Heinz (22%), Kettle (17%) and Twinings (19%) all experienced uplift in sentiment after implementing their social media campaigns.

IAB calculates that, for every £1 spent in social media, a potential value of £3.34 could be generated.

The research was conducted on behalf of the IAB’s Social Media Council and carried out by Marketing Sciences, measuring the impact of social media at various stages in the purchase funnel. More than 4,500 quantitative survey responses were collected via the brands’ social media pages over an eight week period, and supplemented with a further 800 research panel interviews.

Alternative payment methods

According to a report from WorldPay, 49 per cent of customers would like to see biometric payment options available such as palm print or iris scanners.

Surprisingly, this figure dwarfs the 30 per cent interested in PIN-based options.

Email subjects worth testing

Adestra tested a random sample of 95,000 global, English-language campaigns over the last 12 months (for a total of 2.2bn emails), and have isolated 287 popular 'trigger words'. Specific trigger words have a drastic effect on the response rates of offers.

For example, 'Sale' delivers +23.2% opens, but 'Save' only +3.4%. In terms of click throughs, they give +60.7% and -25.2% respectively.

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Comments (2)

Great post! Some really interesting stats that definitely help with mobile marketing. Most surprised at the results for those asked if they would be willing to give their email address to a store/retailer in return for free wifi - and the buzz words for effective click-throughs is also interesting. Thanks :-)

Some great statistics in there, the comment about Travel companies and poor customer services is interesting. Its amazing how many companies in all kinds of sectors still haven't got with the program when it comes to responding quickly and efficiently to customers. The web helped create many of these firms, but it will also be there downfall if they don't meet expectations.

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